Abstract

This article challenges the common idea that teaching means transmitting knowledge. This statement seems unsustainable if one analyzes the problems of communication in teaching. These problems are related to the ways of listening and understanding and also to the content of communication. Hence, we propose to focus our attention on teaching as a help for learning, on learning as a process of action and decision, and on the regulation of this process. This alternative point of view doesn’t have the same considerable impasses that the idea of teaching as transmission does. Lastly, this paper clarifies the epistemological assumptions of the two competing points of view. Both the example of university education and the example of training for work analysis with the goal of prevention in a healthcare service are useful to the discussion.